24.1 Hardware and software required to work with graphics

The computer i am working with is very outdated by todays standards and i am going to pick 2 components out of it to upgrade from the folowing system

Intel Pentium D 'Dual Core X2' CPU (5.3 Ghz)
VIA Chipset 1066 Mhz Motherboard - slots available: AGP8x (1), PCI (3), RAM (2); ports available: LAN (1), USB (6)
512 MB RAM
80 GB HDD (SATA300)
18X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer & Dual Format
onboard UniChrome PRO 3D Graphics with 64 MB shared memory
mouse and keyboard
15" flat screen
cheap inkjet printer

the two components i would upgrade for this system would be the graphics card and mainly the ram as 512mb of ram is just enough for the operatring system alone i would recomend getting atleast 2Gb of ram as the that is the recomended for running all photo editing programs like photoshop, so the new system specs i would choose would be as follows:

Intel Pentium D 'Dual Core X2' CPU (5.3 Ghz)
VIA Chipset 1066 Mhz Motherboard - slots available: AGP8x (1), PCI (3), RAM (2); ports available: LAN (1), USB (6)
2Gb RAM
80 GB HDD (SATA300)
18X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer & Dual Format
8800gt graphics card with 512mb memory
mouse and keyboard
15" flat screen
cheap inkjet printer

24.1.1 Hardware

Graphics (Gpu)
With editing sometimes small parts on an image you are going want a graphics processing unit to be very good and efficient, if your graphics unit is out dated then with the latest software it is going to be very bad a viewing high resolution images that can sometimes and most likely be taken from a high a megapixle camera and now most people will have at least a 5megapixle and sometimes even up to 12megapixle so the graphics is going to be very important in media editing.

Processor
The processor is also going have to be quite a high performance one as it is once of the main parts of the computer that handles all the data and does all the calculations, if the processor is old then the speed of these calculations isn’t going to be good enough to work out the sizes and do it smoothly as for example in Photoshop when you are adding a colour mask into the image it uses a lot of maths to calculate the exact colour for that area and also the intensity so make it look how you want it, so this would use a lot of the processors usage so then the higher clock and number of cores also the amount of cache in a processor would play a big role in this field of work.

Ram
Ram is also a very important part in a computer as if you don’t have a lot then the performance of your computer when doing hard to process tasks will drop and may even crash at times, a good amount of ram to have in a modern media editing computer would be around 2GB so there is plenty for the computers operating system to run and enough for the tasks in hand that are going to use a lot of ram.

Hard disk drive (HDD)
The size of storage in a hard dist drive is important in graphic editing as the images and also the photo shop save files can be very big, with new cameras like 12megapixle digital slr’s that’s each image can be around 3 to for megabits large so if you are having this as a hobby or a profession you are going want a hard disk drive with a lot of storage, the amount of storage you are going to want is about 100Gb to around 160Gb that would give you more than enough room for al the files. Also with hard drives you are going to want look at the amount of cache is has as this is the very fast memory before it goes into the hard drive so you are going to want around 32Mb so it can perform well and let you carry on with the job in hand.

24.1.1.4 Digital card reader
a digital card reader is a device that can be intergrated into a desktop pc or a laptop and can also have them in the form of a device that uses usb to add the functions in sted of intergrated, the purpose of a card reader is so you can take your flash memory out of a device like a digital camera or a media player and view the files on it like a usb memory stick. these devices are they usefull as they have slots for every type of flash card there is so if u change your digital camera and it uses a different type there is no need to buy a new card reader.

24.1.1.7 Input Devices

Mouse
with a mouse you are going want one that is nice to work with so it fits nicely into your hand and also you want one with quite a high but not huge DPI (dots per inch) so it tracks very nice and is easy to locate a point on an image that you are editing using a mouse that has high DPI you can turn the sensitivity down on the computer so that the mouse can work to its full potential.

Keyboard
the keyboard is quite an inportant part of the computer and probably one of the simpilest devices you will be using on in, when it comes to a good keyboard you are going want it to have a nice feel so that is is nice to use and also you are going want it to be high ajustable so that it can suit your requirements. more features of keyboards is a palm rest and full-size key layout help you type comfortably even for an exstended amount of use.

mass storage device
also known as a pen drive or memory card, these devices are they usefull as if u want to take documents with you and need to transport files to a different workstation these will do the job very well, there are a lot of forms of storage media from usb flash drives rangeing for sizes of 124mb all the way up to 64gb and then there is flash cards for digital camaras and can be pluged into the card reader on the selected computer.


24.1.2 Output Media

Printer
a printer is a peripheral which produces a hard copy of document stored in electronic form, usually on physical media like paper. most printers are connected to the local computer by printer cable or USB but can also be connected or have a built in printer server so you can use that one printer to print from any number of computers on the network from wired or wireless depending on the network setup.

Monitor
One of the main components that need to be very good in media and graphic editing is a good monitor, if your monitor isn’t set up correctly with colours and contrast then when your picture would be viewed or printed it could look very different and even wrong. Also the monitor’s resolution needs to be correct ad it could make the image look squashed and wrong so the higher the screen resolution the better.